Leave Immigration Law To The Feds

September 26, 1997

A growing number of Chicago suburbs face a serious law enforcement problem: youth gangs. The federal government, particularly in large metropolitan areas like Chicago, has its own law-enforcement problem: illegal immigration.

Each problem is significant in its own right and deserves full attention. But using local police departments to enforce immigration laws, or federal agents to get at small-gauge gang-bangers, is not an efficient use of resources and is a threat to individual liberties.

Local police departments seem to be the ones who have taken the initiative during the past few years in arresting illegal immigrants. And stories of mistaken identities and goofups abound and keep trickling in every week: A young U.S. citizen being detained for several hours by the police in southwest suburban Summit because he had a thick Spanish accent (he was born here but raised in Mexico) and couldn't prove that he was a U.S. citizen.

Or a young Mexican, also a U.S. citizen, being mistakenly turned over to the immigration detention center in Broadview by a suburban officer--and freed by federal agents after just a few inquiries.

These arrests seem to follow a pattern of routine traffic stops, generally of Hispanic men in their 20s, followed by questioning and detention because, as one suburban police chief put it, "they looked illegal." That's a far cry from the standard of "articulable facts" required of federal agents before they question someone's immigration status.

No doubt such tactics do net some arrests of illegal immigrants. But the threat to the civil liberties of everyone is too serious to make them acceptable tools.

In the hands of suburban police officers, inexperienced in this area, immigration law also is too blunt and counterproductive a weapon in the fight against gangs or other public safety concerns.

Initiatives such as community policing, for instance, rely heavily on citizen trust and participation. Tactics that suggest racial bias by targeting certain groups--in this case Hispanics--achieve just the opposite result.

Suburban police units no doubt have a full agenda, possibly topped by the problem of city gangs expanding their turfs. These officers need and deserve all the legal and logistical resources they can get to accomplish their mission. But prudence dictates that that mission ought not include enforcement of federal immigration laws.